Week 6 – JESSICA WIEDEMANN

Something I remember from elementary school and junior high is that during holidays like Christmas or thanksgiving there was always a food/can drive at school. We were in many ways required to bring something. In elementary school, it was more to teach us the act of giving to others and to help in our community. In junior high, there was more of a competitive vibe that went along with the community service we were supposed to feel the need as citizens to do. If we were the class who brought the most food or cans to school the reward was a pizza party for the class. I never really saw these acts to be self-less or to be for the greater good of my community. It didn’t click in that we were doing these things for others to become a better citizen. It just seemed to be something we did without thinking, I don’t distinctly remember an explanation for the actions we were doing, it was just exected. One of the only times where I did that type of community service was when my mom and I decided to try delivering packages for Santa’s Anonymous. I was young and I didn’t understand the actual meaning behind the act of doing the community service. The main focus of the community service that I was taught in my younger years was the personally responsible stage. There wasn’t any look as to why these people were hungry or didn’t have money for food. Even some of the places where the actions wanted of us came from were not from places of actual want or feeling to do it. Making something like the competitive took away from the feeling of wanting to help someone or to take your time and give it to someone else to help them. I don’t feel as though I was taught to help others because of solidarity or being a giving individual, that message did not come across in the requirements of my education to do charitable acts for others.

In curriculum, there is focus on academic and logical thinking where the topic of self, giving and spirituality of becoming part of the community. The idea of citizenship is personal and is different to each person individually. WIth the curriculum being so focused on the academic part of education there is very little room for the development of a citizen and exploring what that means for every person individually. Obviously, there cannot be parts of the curriculum made for each student individually but there can be areas of the curriculum where students can explore what being a citizen or being apart of the community and the world means to them. This would create the type of spirit of a person, outside the rigidity of Taylor’s want to make the perfect adult. Taking more time in the curriculum and education to explore what being a citizen means and how individuals want to be involved would increase the self of self in students. Understanding where one fits in society and the world creates a direction to where one sees a need for them to fill.

Featured Photo by Don Ross III on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Altering Perspectives and Assumptions of Education

Being a teacher has a lot to do with the way that we orientate ourselves to teaching itself and to the world around us. In lecture, we talked about the impact our orientations have on our teachings as well as how we interact with others. This lead into the topics of grand narratives, the concept of learning spirit and assumptions of educational discourse.

The Grand Narrative

The grand narrative is defined by Jean-François Lyotard as “a totalizing, comprehensive account of various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena” and with this definition, there are biases and predigests that are intertwined with the teachings ins schools about where a country has come from and the events that have gone on in history. Much of the grand narrative I know was taught to me as the history of the country I live in. Coming to university has opened my eyes to the variety of different narratives that are in history. I grew up in a primarily white community and didn’t have much exposure to other cultures so for myself, the grand narrative seemed to make sense and there wasn’t much to question because there weren’t many people of different cultures present in my classrooms. Learning more about these other narratives will make me a better teacher because I will know how to integrate these other perspectives into my lessons. I will know how to change my orientation and my perspective on these narratives and what the grand narrative that I learned taught me about these other narratives.

Learning Spirit

Learning spirit is a concept introduced by Battiste (2017) which is the journey of learning. The idea is that there aren’t stages of learning or that there is a point where people are done learning, “learning is our purpose in life.” This idea supports the lifelong learner that the curriculum and teachers in past schooling have talked about. The holistic component of this idea increases the spirituality involved in learning and education. I mean not the spirituality of something like a religion, rather I mean the sense of self and the essence of someone’s being, their soul. One’s spirit of learning has more to do with their view of learning and how much they value it, what it means to someone.

5 Assumptions about Education

There were 5 assumptions about educational discourse presented in lecture:

A belief in the existence of notions of change, thinking, learning, and mind
Focus on the necessity of education
A movement towards logic and advancement
Particular knowledge as more important, more sophisticated, more legitimate
The inferiority of particular people within education

Some of these assumptions have begun to change over the course of my education like the focus of the necessity of education, the particular knowledge is more important and the hierarchy of people in education. From seeing my other siblings graduate from high school it seems there are more young people choosing to pursue other types of careers rather than the traditional post-secondary educations like going to university. Another path they are taking is they simply take a year or more to find what they want from life and what kind of career they want to move towards. The assumption that there is a focus on the necessity of education is challenged and changing as more students choose to take alternate paths in their lives than the path directly to post-secondary education after high school. With the wider spread of knowledge from educations other than the traditional modes of education, there are more types of knowledge like personal experience that is still valid and in ways more reliable than traditional instruction. As new teachers are being educated there is more emphasis on the subjects other than science, math, and logic there is more emphasis in the real world on the arts and their value in education. With more teachers becoming educated about the incorrect, unjust, and prejudicial judgments these assumptions make there is a shift in these assumptions, and these assumptions are changing for the better.

Changing our perspectives on what types of education and historical information are valued is the beginning of further changes in education and prejudices that are in the world, but with the changing of these assumptions, are new assumptions made about education, if so what are they and are they negative or positive?

Featured Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

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